Shadowed Mirror
by TwinEnigma
Summary: <html><head></head>It is said that the mirror reveals the soul. Even after the Ceremonial Duel, Ryou finds himself avoiding his reflection.</html>


_**Shadowed Mirror**_

_by TwinEnigma_

_Standard Disclaimer:_ I do this for fun, to practice, and not for profit. Anything from _YuGiOh_ you recognize, I _obviously_ do not own.

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><p>Ryou doesn't much like seeing his reflection. He avoids anything reflective when he can help it, always looking away before his eyes can catch the ephemeral shade of himself in the glass. It's an odd thing, to be sure, and he isn't even totally sure <em>why<em> he's still so put off by it. The Spirit of the Ring is long gone and he is no longer the boy that served as the pawn of such malevolence. He's changed so much since then that he hardly resembles the boy he was at all. Nonetheless, the fact remains something about his reflection is intrinsically unsettling to him, even now.

He knows that this was not always a _thing_ with him. That much, at least, he is completely sure of. Yet, he can't pin down when exactly it had started to become this _thing_ that has now come to rule his behavior so thoroughly. There are gaps in his memories of certain events, gaps that even his friends cannot fully shed light on.

Even if he has no personal recollection of the actions or purpose of the malevolent spirit that had possessed him, there are, of course, other ways Ryou could fill in the blanks and he _knows _that. Between the surveillance footage of his father's museum and various arenas and the tapes of the broadcasted duels, there is more than enough documented video of his presence to account for the majority of his physical whereabouts during the blackouts. From there, it was just a matter of lining things up.

In the end, Ryou refuses to look at the tapes. The very idea of seeing his _body_ do all those things when he knows that it is not him in there fundamentally disturbs him. If and when he's being totally honest with himself, he thinks it's not that it's not him that's upsetting so much as it's that he is not sure he wants to know how good the spirit _really_ was at pretending to be _him._ He'd have liked to believe that his friends could tell the difference between him and the Spirit of the Ring but, loathe as he is to admit it, the truth is it's obvious that they hadn't been able to. Worse still was the discovery of just how deeply that malevolence had traumatized them. He'd never have known, not really, but after the Ceremonial Duel, there had been an incident and he can't remember ever having been so livid, before or _since_. What he _does_ remember is the fear that flashed across his friend's faces in the face of his fury.

"I'm sorry," he recalls Muto saying, guilt and shame painted on his face. "It's just that, for a moment, you looked…"

At the time, the _like him_ remained unsaid, but Ryou had understood all the same.

And sometimes, when he's not lying to himself, he knows that's the reason he's so aggressively tried to reinvent himself over the years – cutting his hair short, dumping his old wardrobe for something brighter, and spending more time seeking adventures elsewhere, as far from the shadows as he could manage. The truth is that he'd do _anything, _really, to distance himself from the face that had caused his friends so much suffering. And, in that capacity, he thinks he's succeeded rather spectacularly. It's no longer the face of a pale, long-haired and gangly teen in the mirror, but that of a short-haired man, vibrant from a life lived in the light of day.

Sometimes, he looks in the mirror and has trouble seeing the boy he used to be. But more often than he'd like, he still catches himself in the action of avoiding his reflection and he's forced to wonder at the origin of that instinct, why it still lingers even though he's changed so _much_. What is it about his own face that fills him with such a sense of disquiet, even now?

"Perhaps it isn't so much your reflection you fear, but the truth that it reveals," Ishizu had told him, once, when they'd run into each other during one of his father's business trips on behalf of the museum.

They had sat in a café, overlooking the Nile. Luxurious coffee graced their cups. Below, the bustling din of the Egyptian riverfront carried through the air. He recalls having had the strangest sense of déjà vu, as if they had been sitting there like that a thousand times before, and then it had gone, lost on the currents of a hot western wind.

That night, he had dreamt of blood and sand, of screams and molten gold.

In the morning, he'd flown back to Japan without so much as a second thought.

And now he lets his feet lead him back to places he hasn't tread in years, to the familiar game shop that was once at the heart of the whirlwind of fate binding him to his friends, and carry him through the humble door.

There is no mistaking Muto behind the counter – his hairstyle is the same as ever, even if his face is sharper, more akin to the ghostly shadow of that ancient pharaoh than ever before – but the surprise and bewilderment that flashes across his face is unexpected.

"It hasn't been _that_ long, Muto," Ryou tells him, rolling his eyes.

Muto then smiles, shaking his head, and shrugs: "Sorry, Bakura. For a moment there, I thought you were someone else."

In the reflection of the glass cases, Ryou is able to see himself out of the corner of his eyes: a man in red and white, his short white hair in messy locks over sun-darkened skin. He laughs a little, leaning in to look at the cards below, and, jokingly, wonders aloud, "Who else would I be?"


End file.
